Zanna, Don’t!
Zanna, Don’t!
Book, music and lyrics by Tim Acito
Additional material by Alexander Dinelaris
Directed by Tim Evanicki
Choreography by Keith Wilson
Musical Directing by John T Gardener
Starring Alexander Browne, Matthew T Walker, and Adam Delmedico
Tim Evanicki Productions and Watermark Publishing Groups
Presented at The Parliament House Footlights Theatre
Orlando FL
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In the sparkly world of Zanna (Browne) society has inverted; the straights get picked on and prevented from attending proms. High School is still a special level of hell no matter which way you swing, but when new kid Steve (Walker) arrives, he blends in quietly to the football team. The king of this campus is chess whiz Mike (DelMedico) and they make a pretty couple of brains and brawn. We need a crisis, and with the school play looming Mike suggests a suggestive show: one about straights serving in in the Army. Talk about pushing limits, you Spartans! It’s a musical to boot, Mike estimates he can knock it out in a week or so. Meanwhile Zanna serves as the Heartsville High matchmaker; he does his magic with a pink glitter wand and small bird named Cindy. When Steve (Walker) and Kate (Noa Carmel) fall into forbidden love Zanna finds a spell to unite them at the cost of swapping the entire universe. We end with boys kissing girls and same sex couples fading back into the mist. So this is the message I see: we can have thing one way or the other, but never both at the same time.
Packed with great songs, clever staging and box full of audio problems this is a show with good intentions that needs some technical clean up. The singers are often hard to hear and with intermittent microphones they don’t project to the back rows. Brown’s Zanna is funny and physical, his wand drags him around the stage in a way Harry Potter would never approve. DelMedico is his usual chaming self, and Walker takes a very funny approach to the football hero whose low man on the high school totem pole. Staging makes good use of minimal props and effective lighting, and even though Cindy bird misses a few cues, she’s charming if a bit contrived. Better sound will make a better, show, I suspect this problem will soon be fixed.
For more information on the Footlights Theater, please visit http://www.parliamenthouse.com/footlight-theatre/
